Effective Use of Pecs and Transversus Thoracics Plane Blocks for Subcutaneous Cardiac Pacemaker Insertion: A Case Series

Plain-language summary

Participants that undergo permanent cardiac pacemaker implantation can often present with challenging anesthetic management plans for the anesthesia provider. Typically, these procedures are performed in electrophysiology labs that are often in remote locations away from the main operating room suite. This presents the logistic challenges of not having standard anesthesia machines, equipment and medications readily available for these cases.Currently, the majority of these cases are done under local anesthesia with light to moderate sedation. However, when it comes to inserting more complex devices such as implantable cardiac defibrillators and cardiac resynchronization therapy devices, participants may not be able to tolerate these more invasive and painful procedures with only local anesthetic as the primary mode of analgesia. Ultrasound-guided regional anesthetic techniques, in particular the pectoralis nerve blocks (PEC I and II) and the Transversus Thoracic Muscle plane block (TTP), offer an alternative mode of analgesia for these participants. PEC I blocks target the lateral and medial pectoral nerves by injecting local anesthetic in the fascial plane between the pectoralis major and minor muscles. PEC II blocks supplement the PEC I block by targeting the intercostal nerves with local anesthetic injected between the pectoralis minor and serratus anterior muscles. The transversus thoracic plane block targets the anterior cutaneous branches of the intercostal nerves. In combination, these four blocks would provide analgesia of the upper anterior chest wall.(3)These would provide effective analgesia of the upper anterior chest wall.(7). However, there is a paucity of studies on the use of PEC blocks in cardiac pacemaker implantation procedures. There is a case report from 2014 on a 71 year-old male with an ejection fraction of 20% undergoing CRTD implantation, which showed that PECs block with moderate sedation using dexmedetomidine could be safely utilized to provide effective analgesia for the procedure.11 However, this was not a subcutaneous ICD that required tunneling of the coils. Thus there are no randomized controlled studies to investigate whether the use of peripheral nerve blocks as primary anesthetic choice could be a viable alternative for multiple participants undergoing subcutaneous ICD placement.

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